/lit/ - Literature

[Anonymous No.20339945]

This is a thread to discuss pure kino.

[Anonymous No.20339962]

>>20339945
You first.

[Anonymous No.20339994]

>>20339962
Please stay on topic xir.

[Anonymous No.20340127]

>>20339945
It's pissing me off that The Aeneid doesn't align with the others

[Anonymous No.20340131]

virgil more like virgin LMAO

[Anonymous No.20340135]

[Anonymous No.20340137]

>>20339945
I don't like that they mixed races in that collection

[Anonymous No.20340979]

>>20339945
Are these books actually good or is
>start with the greeks
a meme?

[Anonymous No.20341006]

>>20340127
that's just to reflect that the quality of Virgil's work doesn't align with that of Homer

[Anonymous No.20341009]

>>20340979
Yes to both.

[Anonymous No.20341112]

>>20339945
Is Fagles' version of The Iliad the best?

[Anonymous No.20341132]

>>20341112
Not OP but in my opinion no. I think Lattimore is best (among english translations). Fagles uses more modern language which I'm not really a fan of. Of course my opinion isn't very informative because I've never compared their translations to the originals myself.

Personally I think the best way to look at it is to view each translation as it's own text. So instead of asking which is the best translation of The Iliad, view Lattimore's Iliad and Fagles' Iliad as separate texts entirely.

[Anonymous No.20341167]

>>20341132
Thanks bro.

[Anonymous No.20341183]

>>20341167
No problem, enjoy.

>>20340979
Yeah they're really good and start with the greeks isn't a meme. Anything good written since then in the West references or derives from the Greeks, so if you want to get the most out of your reading you need to start with the greeks.

[Anonymous No.20341187]

>Time shut its wings for a brief moment and stood still
>so that the lone mind could have ample time to climb
>with skillful fingers all the rungs of mortal virtues.
>Below, the most coarse head, a brutal base of flesh,
>swelled like a bloated beast bristling with large boar-tusks,
>and it was fortified with veins as thick as horns.
>Above it, like a warrior's crest, the second head
>clenched its sharp teeth and frowned with hesitating brows
>like one who scans his danger, quakes before death's door,
>but in his haughty pride still feels ashamed to flee.
>The third head gleamed like honey with voluptuous eyes,
>its pale cheeks hallowed by the flesh's candied kisses,
>and a dark lovebite scarred its he-goat lips with blood.
>The fourth head lightly rose, its mouth a whetted blade,
>its neck grew slender and its brow rose tall as though
>its roots had turned to flower, its meat to purest mind.
>The fifth head's towering brow was crushed with bitter grief,
>deep trenches grooved it, and its flaming cheeks were gripped
>with torturous arms as by a savage octopus;
>it bit its thin lips hopelessly to keep from howling.
>Above it shone serenely the last head but one,
>and steadfast weighed all things, beyond all joy or grief,
>like an all-holy, peaceful, full-fed, buoyant spirit.
>It gazed on Tartarus and the sky, a slight smile bloomed
>like the sun's subtle afterglow on faded lips;
>it sauntered on the highest creviced peaks of air
>where all things seem but passing dream and dappled mist;
>and from its balding crown, that shone like a smooth stone
>battered by many flooding seas and licked by cares,
>there leapt up like unmoving flame the final head,
>as if it were a crimson thread that strung the heads
>like amber beads in rows and hung them high in air.
>The final head shone, crystal-clear, translucent, light,
>and had no ears or eyes, no nostrils, mouth, or brow,
>for all its flesh had turned to soul, and soul to air!
>Odysseus fondled all the demon's seven souls
>as he had never fondled woman, son, or native land."Ah, my dear God, if only my dark soul could mount
>the seven stories step by step and fade in flame,
>but I'm devoured by beasts and filled with mud and brain!"

[Anonymous No.20341204]

>>20340135
This is actually really good. I've only ever read her stuff that was assigned in school, so i've always seen her as a bit of a meme

[Anonymous No.20341297]

>>20339945
>The old world, speaking strictly, knew but one poet, and named him "Homeros." The Greek word "Poietes," which [138] the Latins—unable to translate it—reproduced as "Poeta," recurs most naïvely among the Provençals as "Trouvère," and suggested to our Middle-high Germans the term of "Finder," Gottfried von Strassburg calling the poet of Parzival a "Finder wilder Märe" ("finder of strange tales"). That "poietes"—of whom Plato averred that he had found for the Greeks their gods—would seem to have been preceded by the "Seer," much as the vision of that ecstatic shewed to Dante the way through Hell and Heaven. But the prodigy of the Greeks' sole poet—"the"—seems to have been that he was seer and poet in one; wherefore also they represented him as blind, like Tiresias. Whom the gods meant to see no semblance, but the very essence of the world, they sealed his eyes; that he might open to the sight of mortals that truth which, seated in Plato's figurative cavern with their backs turned outwards, they theretofore could see in nothing but the shadows cast by Show, This poet, as "seer," saw not the actual (das Wirkliche), but the true (das Wahrhaftige), sublime above all actuality; and the fact of his being able to relate it so faithfully to hearkening men that to them it seemed as clear and tangible as anything their hands had ever seized—this turned the Seer to a Poet.
>Was he "Artist" also?
>Whoso should seek to demonstrate the art of Homer, would have as hard a task before him as if he undertook to shew the genesis of a human being by the laborious experiments of some Professor—supramundane, if you will—of Chemistry and Physics. Nevertheless the work of Homer is no unconscious fashioning of Nature's, but something infinitely higher; perhaps, the plainest manifestation of a godlike knowledge of all that lives. Yet Homer was no Artist, but rather all succeeding poets took their art from him, and therefore is he called "the Father of Poetry" (Dichtkunst). All Greek genius is nothing else than an artistic réchauffé (Nachdichtung) of Homer; for purpose of this réchauffé, was first discovered and matured that "Techne" which at last we have raised to a general principle under name of the Art of Poetry, wrongheadedly including in it the "poietes" or "Finder der Märe."

[Anonymous No.20341306]

>>20341297
>The "ars poetica" of the Latins may rank as art, and from it be derived the whole artifice of verse-and-rhyme-making to our present day. If Dante once again was dowered with the Seer's eye—for he saw the Divine, though not the moving shapes of gods, as Homer—when we come to Ariosto things have faded to the fanciful refractions of Appearance; whereas Cervantes spied between the glintings of such arbitrary fancies the old-poetic world-soul's cloven quick, and sets that cleavage palpably before us in the lifelike actions of two figures seen in dream. And then, as if at Time's last stroke, a Scotsman's "second sight" grows clear to full clairvoyance of a world of history now lying lost behind us in forgotten documents, and its facts he tells to us as truthful fairy-tales told cheerily to listening children. But from that ars poetica, to which these rare ones owed no jot, has issued all that calls itself since Homer "Epic poetry"; and after him we have to seek the genuine epic fount in tales and sagas of the Folk alone, where we find it still entirely undisturbed by art.
>To be sure, what nowadays advances from the feuilleton to clothe the walls of circulating libraries, has had to do with neither art nor poesy. The actually-experienced has at no time been able to serve as stuff for epic narration; and "second sight" for the never-witnessed does not bestow itself on the first romancer who passes by. A critic once blamed the departed Gutzkow for depicting a poet's love-affairs with baronesses and countesses, "things of which he certainly could never have had any personal experience"; the author most indignantly replied by thinly-veiled allu sions to similar episodes that actually had happened to himself. On neither side could the unseemly folly of our novel-writing have been more cryingly exposed.—Goethe, on the other hand, proceeded in his "Wilhelm Meister" as the artist to whom the poet had refused his collaboration in discovery of a satisfactory ending; in his "Wahlverwandtschaften" the lyric elegist worked himself into a seer of souls, but not as yet of living shapes. But what Cervantes had seen as Don Quixote and Sancho Pansa, dawned on Goethe's deep world-scrutiny as Faust and Mephistopheles; and these shapes beheld by his ownest eye now haunt the seeking artist as the riddle of an ineffable poet's-dream, which he thought, quite un-artistically but thoroughly sincerely, to solve in an impossible drama.

[Anonymous No.20341309]

>>20341306
>There may be something to learn from this, even for our members of the "German Poets'-grove" who feel neglected by their none too ardent publishers. For alas! one must say of their novels, their spirit's ripest fruits, that they have sprung from neither life nor tradition, but simply from theft and traduction. If neither the Greeks at their prime, nor any later great nation of culture, such as the Italians and Spaniards, could win from passing incidents the matter for an epic story, to you moderns this will presumably come a trifle harder: for the events they witnessed, at least were real phenomena; whilst ye, in all that rules, surrounds and dwells in you, can witness naught but masquerades tricked out with rags of culture from the wardrobe-shop and tags from the historical marine-store. The seer's eye for the ne'er-experienced the gods have always lent to none but their believers, as ye may ascertain from Homer or Dante. But ye have neither faith nor godliness.
- Wagner, On Poetry and Composition

[Anonymous No.20341494]

Should I read the restored works that vhf take place before and after the illiad and odyssey? Should I just start with the Cypriot before reading the illiad?

[Anonymous No.20341517]

>>20339945
What do you guys think about the Samuel Butler prose translation? I got it a few years ago at a second hand bookstore for 1€ and it’s the only one I have. I don’t know if I should get another version or just stick to that one. And should I read the Iliad in English or in German?

[Anonymous No.20341544]

>>20341187
I will read this... one day.

[Anonymous No.20341629]

>>20341309
Interesting read, haven't really read or listened to Wagner, do you recommend something?

[Anonymous No.20341635]

>>20341187
>Odysseus (Ulysses) returns to Ithaca and decides to undertake new adventures after he quickly becomes dissatisfied with his quiet family life and they too with his brutality. First he travels to Sparta to save Helen, the wife of the king of Sparta Menelaus, whose abduction by Paris had led to the Trojan War. He goes to Crete where a conspiracy dethrones the king. He is abandoned by Helen who runs off with a black slave and continues to Egypt, where again a workers' uprising takes place. He leaves again on a journey up the Nile eventually stopping at the lake-source. Upon arrival his companions set up camp and he climbs the mountain in order to concentrate on his god. Upon his return to the lake he sets up his city based on the commandments of his religion. The city is soon destroyed by an earthquake. Odysseus laments his failure to understand the true meaning of god with the sacrifice of his companions. His life transforms into that of an ascetic. Odysseus meets Motherth (an incarnation of the Buddha), Kapetán Énas (English: Captain Sole, literally "Captain One", a Greek folk expression for people who are insubordinate and single-minded to a fault), alias Don Quixote, and an African village fisherman, alias Jesus. He travels further south in Africa while constantly spreading his religion and fighting the advances of death. Eventually he travels to Antarctica and lives with villagers for a year until an iceberg kills him. His death is glorious as it marks his rebirth and unification with the world.

What??

[Anonymous No.20341677]

>>20340127
Penguin is actually pretty bad about that. Line up a random selection of their volumes and they will almost always be misaligned.

[Anonymous No.20341779]

>>20341629
For an introduction to his ideas read The Destiny of Opera (though unfortunately only available in a 19th century translation), for an introduction to his art I'd recommend listening to Lohengrin (with a libretto). It's one of his earlier romantic operas, very beautiful, but pales before his late dramas.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dtl0xI8_MhY

>There is in this a beauty of dialogue such as is frequently found in Wagner's dramas, all soaked in primitive magic, all enhanced by ideal sentiment, and the solemnity of which in no way diminishes natural grace.
- Baudelaire on Lohengrin

[Anonymous No.20342843]

>>20341544
It actually isn't that difficult, it was the first book by Kazantzakis that i read, but especially with the chapter summaries (in the edition i got) it was easy to get into a real rhythm and it cemented my love of epic poetry and verse novels. the issue is with understanding who the characters represent and therefore what Kazantzakis thought of the ideals they exemplified. although you can get a lot no matter how familiar you are with the western canon and Buddhism.
>>20341635
Kazantzakis wrote this as his magnum opus, which included all his opinions on different philosophies he had come in contact with as well as his own worldview. The lines i posted describe the man's ascent from animals to gods through the transubstantiation of matter into spirit, something Kazantzakis believed we as humans can't achieve but we should still try to achieve.

[Anonymous No.20342849]

>>20339945
Has anyone here read the Chapman translations? I've heard they were really nice and was thinking about buying that version.

[Anonymous No.20342873]

>>20342843
also to add, you can get a lot out of buddha (a play) and saviors of god (a book of spiritual excercises) without having to commit to 33,333 lines. both of them are out of print as physical books but used ones are affordable, spiritual excercises is sold by the publisher as an ebook, and a pdf of buddha has been uploaded to libgen. make sure to get the copy of buddha by "Nikos Kazantzakis" rather than by "Nikos Kazantzakis (Νίκος Καζαντζάκης)" because the first one is a corrected version of the second one (second one cut out the speakers of lines) and I haven't asked them to remove the second one yet.

[Anonymous No.20342880]

>>20339945
question: which is the best book for Jason and the Argonauts and Anabasis?

[Anonymous No.20342893]

>>20340127
Sadly this is the case with most collections by most publishers. It's very rare to find sets that actually line up.

[Anonymous No.20342932]

>>20342880
the landmark edition of the anabasis is the best, but the penguin classics one is also good and available used for much cheaper.

[Anonymous No.20343022]

Is the Hellenica by Xenophon nearly as good as the History of the Peloponnesian War?

[Anonymous No.20343051]

>>20343022
no, I regret reading it. just read a synopsis and move on to the anabasis.

[Anonymous No.20343149]

>>20342873
update: since the first buddha is now downloadable (i uploaded it today, it takes a couple hours before other people can download it)
I just asked for the second version to be deleted or for the file to be replaced. If all goes well there won't be any confusion on which version to choose and if all goes very well i'll upload a well formatted epub once i have time to reread it and correct any ocr errors.

[Anonymous No.20343158]

[Anonymous No.20343276]

>>20343022
Xenophon is kind of just a bad author tb h

[Anonymous No.20343332]

>>20340127
>>20341677
>>20342893
Actually, this is just a problem with paperback collections in general. They never align right. Very common with manga volumes, too. The most austic thing I've done with these kinds of paperback collections is that I've made a paper card with exact measurements for alignment and I go to physical bookstores and use the card to judge which copy of the next book I should buy. Because of this, I almost never buy paperbacks online unless I'm buying a full collection and the seller's pictures already show alignment between volumes.

[Anonymous No.20343450]

>>20343332
That is extremely autistic anon, very impressive.